How To Play Jabba’s Palace

To fans of the Love Letter games, it will come as no surprise that this widely popular card game has had equal success in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. That’s right, it seems nothing is safe from the grubby hands of Jabba the Hutt, least of all Love Letter. Star Wars: Jabba’s Palace swaps the royal romance and careful courtship for the slightly less elegant setting of, you guessed it, Jabba the Hutt’s palace. Playing with some of the Galaxy’s best-known heroes and villains, up to four players will battle it out to see who can fulfil the Agenda the quickest.

Set Up

To start a game of Jabba's Palace, all 19 character cards get shuffled, and the top one is placed face-down in the centre of the play area. Then, each player is dealt one card, and the remaining stack is placed, also face-down, in reach of all players. Players then will decide on an Agenda card. These Agendas are the win condition, and so the first player to complete its requirements wins the round. There are four to choose from, and it’s recommended that newbie players start out with the Exalted One Agenda, as this is a little easier to get your head around. This Agenda focuses on the number of cards in hand, which is a little misleading. As players can only ever hold one card in hand, references to ‘cards in hand’ mean the number shown in the top left corner of the card you have.

Gameplay

To start the round of Jabba's Palace, the first player draws a card from the face-down stack, choosing which of their two cards to keep, and which to play. The player then resolves the effect listed on the card they choose to play. These effects can cause others to discard cards, which are placed face up next to them, or be knocked out, preventing them from winning the round. Then, it’s on to the next person, going clockwise around the table. This continues until either the deck runs out or there is only one person left in the round. When the deck has run dry, players determine who has won out of only those left in the round. The winner takes a victory token, and then play resets with the same Agenda card and continues with the winner of the last round dubbed the starting player. Players keeping battling it out until someone has enough victory tokens to win the game. For a two-player game, this is six tokens, but this decreases by one token for every additional player down to three tokens for five or six players.

And just like that, you’ve learnt how to play Star Wars: Jabba’s Palace!